Field Theory by Hadyn Green

This morning in my paying line of work I came across this wee gem:

[The British Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls (snigger)] challenged pupils to come up with new ways to extend the reach of cricket and to use the sport to raise standards across the school curriculum. Whether they regard Balls's delivery as a crafty googly or a lame full toss, the two schools with the best ideas will each receive a set of 15 tickets for one of the ICC World Twenty20 matches at Lord's.

The first challenge could focus on getting more girls involved, promoting small sides, or running indoor tournaments.

Balls also wants to see cricket exploited in the classroom – from the technology used in the computerised ball-tracker, Hawk-Eye, to the way the story of cricket reflects the history of Britain and its former colonies. Then there are the masses of statistics that the game generates.

He went on to say: "Cricket is often called an art and a science – it's time for schools to demonstrate that."

You know, and I'm not being mean to cricket here, I've never heard anyone call cricket an art or a science. Once I thought I heard someone say that a particular stumping was a "great big piece of art", but my hearing isn't so good.

It's not the worst idea for education ever, but I can't really see cricket capturing the hearts and minds of England's children (not at the moment anyway).

England's recent assessment results suggest a decline in literacy and numeracy (they seem to be doing ok at science), but I can't see a cricket stream in their curriculum being a solution to that. Then again I suppose if one of the kids comes up with a better system than Duckworth-Lewis it'll be a genius move.

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The other night, during the innings break in the cricket there was a news headline "Steroids Controversy in Major League Baseball". We rolled our eyes and made glib jokes until the story played and the it wasn't about Barry Bonds (drug calendar) or Miguel Tejada (lied to Congress) but Alex Rodriguez.

A-Rod to that point had been a pretty cool guy (apart form the whole Madonna thing). But fans of the game were looking forward to Rodriguez, a good home-run hitter, to erase that slimy cheater Bonds from the record books. Well now A-Rod is also a slimy cheat has admitted to the steroid use, and baseball is without a slugger that it can worship as a true athlete (also do 'roids turn your skin orange, because what is going on in that photo?). Me, I like Derek Jeter now.

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I'm guessing by the mist outside my window, that we aren't going to be seeing a result in the Rose Bowl today. Which is a shame. And even more of a shame if you are a fan of portents because so far it's been foreshadowing the men's games.

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According to the IRB's analysis of the Wellington Sevens (pdf) the match you'd want to see was Fiji v Canada. It would result in a try to Fiji every 51 seconds. Although Fiji v Argentina or South Africa v England would be much closer and probably more entertaining than seeing Fiji sting those Canucks.

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Lastly, because I can't not mention it, Brett Favre (you may remember him from Something about Mary) has re-retired. This means he has retired twice in the space of a year.

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I'll get to the Super 14 tomorrow

I took this long weekend with a healthy dose of snobbery. There was an international sporting event in town and I was doing everything in my power to avoid it. The Wellingtonista had even provided me with a handy guide to town lest I forget.

But it is hard to forget or avoid the Sevens when it's in town. Case in point: Saturday morning we walked to Newtown for breakfast and discovered outside one of the louder flats on our street someone had written in road-marking-size font "I LOVE [drawing of a penis]".

In fact penises seem to be a good symbol for the Sevens. If they aren't being drawn on various things (walls, road signs, drunk people's faces) they are being removed from trousers and displayed.

But really should we complain so much? The Sevens is a pretty cool event and probably does bring in a lot of people will to spend fistfuls of cash on shiny trinkets and booze. Who cares what they are wearing?

Well no one does. The costumes are really uniforms, one guy in an iPod suit would be a weirdo (or worse "clever") but a group of eight is acceptable. And as long as the guys cross-dress without enjoying it and the girls have short skirts and show cleavage then it's ok. Sort of.

The grunting "frat boy" heterosexualism of it is a little over the top but it's probably the drinking to "get wasted" is probably the worst part. In a couple of weeks the Cuba Carnival will start up and there will again be flamboyant costumes, music, dancing and public drinking and flirtation. But the difference will be that the Carnival attendees will be drinking to enhance their fun, not to see how many Jagermeister shots they can do.

Anyway enough of the social stuff, on the sports side I think we can all agree on two things:

1. why the fuck didn't New Zealand run the ball out of bounds at the end of the match to run the clock down?
2. why do they still let Keith Quinn into the commentary booth

I did yell at the TV a lot during the game. But, I gotta say again, it was nice to be able to watch it on free-to-air TV.

In other oval ball sports the Super 14 is almost ready to start and I know you cricket fans a glad to see the end of this awful awful season for the Black Caps. Once again cricket will take it's rightful place behind rugby, it had a good three months at the number one slot and now it's back to being the "other sport".

Obviously I joke. The Black Caps are doing very well, despite an improved Australia in the last game. And the rugby has come way too soon.

Sorry this is all you guys get. I updated the links from when I first wrote this but a flu-type illness is keeping me beat. Run wild and free in the system

It's like Ali versus Fraser, if the two boxers were given sticks and told to hit balls at each other. Actually it's much better than that.

Nadal versus Federer is going to be one of those rivalries that they make documentary films about (if someone is following these guy around at the moment, i would like to put in a proposal).

If only I liked Nadal. The singlet-wearing chipmunk really annoys me, though I can't figure out why. He does look like Atreyu.

And speaking of the tennis, that old cherry about pay has come up again. The skinny is women play best of three, men play best of five (not including tie-breakers) but both now earn the same prize money.

Money in sports is always about earning potential and women's tennis brings in the punters just as much as men's tennis. Work rates or time spent on court doesn't have too much to do with it. I would be more interested in this issue if tickets to the women's matches were cheaper.

There is the argument that women can in earn more in total by playing doubles as well, something the top men don't do as they are knackered from their five set matches (apparently). I call "boo-hoo" on that (with the appropriate hand gestures) as the average men's career is longer than the average women's so it wil even out.

In the end though, it's not my money. When the WTA players asked for equal pay there would have been more of an argument than "because it's not fair". There would have been a business justification (and hopefully it was a little classier than "it's pretty girls running about in skirts on TV").

To cricket now where hopefully someone is paying the Black Caps some money because they deserve it.

I saw this tweet this morning from Dan:

"Same old Aussies, always cheating!" Haddin knows the rules - gloves in front of the stumps = not out. Unbelievable.

And I thought, oh well, we lost but it looks like we've got something decent to grumble about. But then this from Megan

Whatever. It was never in doubt. Cheating Aussie wicketkeepers notwithstanding.

So we won, but have something to grumble about, in other words a perfect win for New Zealand!

And the White Ferns beat the steenking Aussies too. So good results all around. Well, except for Roger.

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As I mentioned last week, I'm Superbowling today at Four Kings, Wellington. Come down and join us, if ya like. So while I'm gone you kids play nice in the system.

Have you remembered to take Monday, February 2nd off work? I have. In fact it's one of the few times where I know well in advance that I'm definitely going to take a day off. It's Superbowl Monday (which doesn't have the same ring as "Superbowl Sunday" but that's what time zones will do to ya).

The Superbowl is the biggest single-day sporting event every year. And it's biggest by every measure: viewership, money, consumption. The only thing that beats it is the final of the Football World Cup and that's only once every four years.

Superbowls regularly show up on most watched lists, usually just behind the final episode of MASH. Last year's Superbowl (between the then undefeated New England Patriots and the New York Giants) attracted 97.5 million viewers making it the most watched ever. And it was a hell of game to watch.

Contrast that with now.

NBC has rights to the game and has not sold all of its "$3M for 30 seconds" advertising slots. But they are doing better than they were last week, when they had only sold 10% of the available slots. (If the play-offs are anything to go by it'll mainly truck ads).

I mentioned at the beginning of the week that the number of Superbowl parties has dropped. Even the usual flamboyant crappiness that is media day was kind of dull (no insane reporters in wedding dresses asking quarterbacks to marry them).

Last year's Bowl was dominated with talk of how the Patriots would go undefeated (dynasties, playboy QB, ass-hat coach), this year it's all about Kurt Warner (old QB, re-revived career, really seriously likes God). And yet people are still selling tickets for 1000s of dollars. So the enthusiasm is still there.

In fact Americans may not be spending money on the game but they are still as excited as ever to watch it. Heck they are even voting on the outcome of the coin toss. You'll never believe the result:

And don't believe the New Zealand sports reporters, it is not mainly watched for the ads.

Every year on Superbowl Monday there will be an article in the main news about the Superbowl ads and how wacky they are, and which ones got banned and the halftime show (Bruce Springsteen) and then a mention of "wardrobe malfunction". Seriously, it was 2004, get over it. Then during the sports news the game will be given a once-over occasionally good, but usually bad and smug like "what a silly and complicated game, now to rugby and cricket…"

Perhaps the worst thing is that as a New Zealander it's very hard to see those ads, because they are actually fun. (I suggest looking up a live stream called HomerTV if you'd like to watch the game with American ads intact).

My all-time favourite is the Terry Tate Office Linebacker series ("you can't bring that weak-ass-shit up in this humpty-bumpty, WOOOO!" became my favourite phrase for a long time).

My prediction for the game is that the Steelers will win by a touchdown (possibly by 12 points if Hines Ward is active) but that Large Benjamin will be sacked three times and intercepted once. There you go, actual sports prediction. I'll wait while you access your TAB account.

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Now, Wellingtonians: I'm gonna be at the Four Kings bar from about midday on Monday (in some sort of uniform-related clothing). This is your chance to be educated in the finer points of the game by an enthusiast (God, I'm such a train-spotter) or to just come along and have a beer (or wine or sherry or whatever, we don't judge). Megan can tell you how much fun it is.

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Richard Irvine's Links on a Friday (as advertised yesterday) will be up here sometime today.

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UPDATE: Sweet Jeebus! Now this is what I want to eat while I watch the game! The Snack Stadium

It started as a slightly drunk conversation about what music you'd like to have played when you walk out on to the field (Smack My Bitch Up). It escalated into a very drunk conversation about what you would do if you scored.

Naturally there were some favourites from American sports (home of showboating) that we adapted to New Zealand sports. Cricket for example is quite dull when it comes to celebrations of a great feat. After a six or a particularly good innings total you point your bat at the crowd or maybe even remove your helmet. A wicket can result in a group hug and a bottom-patting session (or perhaps more if Emma's writing it). This is, in a word, boring.

The committee decided that it would quite good to see the good old "grenade toss" brought into cricket (where after a wicket the player with the ball pretends the ball is a grenade, pulls the pins and tosses it towards a group of team mates who then fall to the ground as though they are blown up, hilarious when touring Pakistan I imagine).

The batsmen are easier to choreograph because they've got a prop. They could ride the bat around like a horse (a la Happy Gilmore), they could play it like a guitar, they could pretend it's a chainsaw, they could (and this was my favourite) "unscrew" the end of the handle and "scull" the bat before holding the "empty vessel" over their head. This move is recommended for Messrs Ryder and Symonds.

But basically you want arrogance without annoying repetition.

Rugby players tend to like showing off where they are from. For that I recommend using a simple hand gesture. The following are what we ( Amy and I) came up with for:
Auckland

Hamilton

Wellington (already in usage)

Hawke's Bay

and Bay of Plenty.

Expect to see more of those during the upcoming bubblegum rugby season. However, this is still my favourite rugby celebration ever.

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You know that bit of trivia about the US being the current Olympic champs of rugby? Well for Christmas my friend in France, sent me a book from the 1960's of historic Olympic photos. I was leafing through and uploading some of favourites when I found a picture from the 1920 games of "Equipe Nationale Des Etats-Unis D'Amerique".

And that is a kick-ass uniform.

The other pics I upped can be found in this set including these very racy swimsuits from the 1912 games in Stockholm.